We've reached the stage in Shari's recovery where I feel it's safe to leave her for more than a couple of hours, so this morning, early, I drove up to Barnegat Lighthouse SP with the hope that the immature POMARINE JAEGER was still hanging out on the beach after almost a week. As late as 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon it was sighted, but even with that, my hopes were not high.
I had little interest in any of the common birds I saw on my trek down to the ocean (a new sign informed me that it was 0.7 miles), so I merely glanced at the birds along the way. Down on the beach I could see there was a large flock of gulls, and I was hoping the jaeger would be in among them. I was careful not to get too close--I was just at the edge of scoping range when I took the scope off my shoulder, but it didn't matter, the whole flock up and flew off, leaving the beach with just a few examples of garden-variety gullage. I wasn't really inclined to just stand there and hope my target would fly in, but I saw a friend of mine coming down along the jetty, so I waited for him. He had seen me set up the scope, so he thought I had the bird, so he was disappointed too.
We passed the time looking at ducks in the ocean and we were just about to walk back through dunes above the pond, thinking the jaeger might have settled down in there, when another birder I know arrived. Since we hadn't seen the bird, he decided to walk up the beach a bit, but he didn't get more than 50 feet before he said, "There's the bird."
I was looking for a bird flying in, but the jaeger was hunkered down in the sand among some beach grass, just slightly behind us to our right and maybe 75 feet away from where we had been standing for half an hour. I felt like such a dope, the only consolation being that had we started to walk back we surely would have stumbled upon the bird.
Because I don't go on pelagics, Pomarine Jaeger was one of those birds I never expected to add to my life list. To find one stationery on the ground, giving perfect views, was more than I could have wished for. Aside from breeding on the arctic tundra, these birds are supposed to spend all their time at sea, not loafing on a beach. Since the bird can fly, it doesn't appear that there is an injury or illness keeping it ashore. This one is an immature bird according to coloration, but I don't imagine that it's too inexperienced to know it shouldn't be at Barnegat Lighthouse.
We saw two more birders coming down the beach from the north and my friend was frantically waving at them to hurry up. The bird had stood by this time and raised its wings, giving us a looking at the white flashing beneath, a good field mark, but that also meant it might be restless. Just as they walked up, sure enough, the bird flew. They got an okay look at it in flight, but I wouldn't have been satisfied with it. They were getting ready to hunker down and wait for the bird to fly back in but their wait wasn't long because not 5 minutes passed before it came back in over the inlet and settled down about 25 feet from where we'd originally seen it. Life bird all around.
As I mentioned, I wasn't paying too much attention to the other birds, focused as I was on a lifer (another negative by-product of chasing), but on the way back, along the pool, we looked a little closer at what was about. 30 species for the 2 hours I was there.
Brant 150
Canada Goose 10
Gadwall 1 Pool
Mallard 20
American Black Duck 1
Common Eider 3
Harlequin Duck 2
Long-tailed Duck 1
Bufflehead 1
Killdeer 1 Pool
Greater Yellowlegs 1 Pool
Sanderling 1
Dunlin 100
POMARINE JAEGER 1
Laughing Gull 1
Ring-billed Gull 20
American Herring Gull 40
Great Black-backed Gull 15
Horned Grebe 1
Red-throated Loon 1
Common Loon 1
Snowy Egret 2 Exact count. Pool
American Crow 1
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
Carolina Wren 1
House Sparrow 1
Snow Bunting 20
Savannah Sparrow 2
Song Sparrow 3
Yellow-rumped Warbler 10
